This invention relates generally to supportive seating for those who are handicapped and more particularly, to a seat support and restraint system capable of slowing muscle and skeletal deformation and facilitating therapy of a neurologically impaired occupant and particularly of a disabled child.
Neurologically impaired individuals suffer from injury, disease or disorder of the brain or nervous system. Two leading causes of neurological impairment, particularly in children, are cerebal palsy and muscular dystrophy. While the severity of such disorders will vary, in many cases the children suffer from characteristic symptoms such as partial or total loss of muscular control and motion, and partial loss of speech, hearing and reasoning abilities. As a result, such children often possess limited daily living skills. Additionally, such children often experience progressive muscular and skeletal deformity due to the insufficiently controlled manner in which their muscles and bones develop. Most, if not all presently available seating structures for disabled children fail to assist such a child in performing daily living skills and fail to assist in slowing the child's muscular and skeletal deformities.
There have basically been two approaches to the seating of neurologically impaired children. A first approach has been to produce customized seating for each child. A customized seat is typically produced by molding a seating surface about a child's body structure or by hand fabricating a seating surface about a child's body structure from plywood, blocked foam and vinyl. There are several drawbacks, however, to such a customized seating approach aside from the obvious cost considerations. For example, since a child's body is continually developing, a customized seat is likely to be outgrown in a relatively short interval. More importantly, however, because such seats are formed or constructed about a child's body structure, (including existing deformities) they do not assist in controlling or slowing the progress of muscular or skeletal deformities nor do they facilitate muscle therapy of a seated occupant.
A second seating approach has been to produce seating structures widely adaptable to different children. Such adaptable structures typically have several adjustable components which adapt to different children. Again, however, there are several drawbacks to such an approach. Since these seats are generally adaptable, they typically consist of self contained, bulky structures which necessarily are limited in where they can be used. In addition, they are usually complicated structures to properly adjust and are difficult to maintain in proper adjustment with extended use. Also, since these seats normally have flat, adjustable support surfaces to accommodate different children, they clearly lack the contoured body support needed to control and slow muscle and skeletal deformation and facilitate therapy.
Therefore, there presently exists a genuine need for a seat support and restraint system capable of properly aligning a neurologically impaired child's body so as to improve the child's daily living skills, slow the child's progressive muscular and skeletal deterioration and facilitate therapy.